Last month, The
Hanover Insurance Group announced its business strategy – Hanover 2021 – which reinforced its commitment to the independent agent channel, introduced its plans to expand its domestic and international specialty business, and outlined a new initiative for innovation.
Insurance Business caught up with the Worcester-based insurer to find out more about the strategy, and how it will support agents.
As part of Hanover 2021, the company’s small commercial, middle market and personal lines businesses will be combined into one division, which The Hanover said will provide its distribution partners with “products and services that enable them to meet a wide range of their customers’ evolving needs.”
“We are firm believers in the future of the independent agent channel, and we are committed to working closely with our partner agents to best serve their clients,” a spokesperson for the company explained.
“This model will also help us to enhance existing offerings, selectively expand our risk appetite, pursue new customer segments, and grow our presence in under-penetrated geographic markets.”
Under the new strategy, The Hanover announced that it will be forming a separate unit to drive innovation across its businesses – identifying emerging customer segments, leveraging data and analytics, and creating business solutions to address customer needs which aims to help distribution partners innovate and strategically grow their businesses.
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“It’s an understatement that the insurance space is experiencing rapid change,” the spokesperson said.
Customer expectations are increasing, and the way clients want to buy and service their insurance policies is changing – and insurtech companies are quickly emerging in response.
“Our innovation teams will focus on developing growth solutions that help our partner agents attract new customers in new market segments,” the spokesperson continued. “We will develop tools and capabilities that can be deployed with our agents; most likely digitally enabled, to help find, sell and service the right type of value oriented customers.
“As a result, we believe our agents will profitably grow their business in general and with The Hanover.”
Future growth is also a key part of the strategy, with the company focusing on three growth levers in relation to its specialty expansion.
“The first is to deepen our specialty penetration within the independent agent channel by thoughtfully expanding our capabilities (business classes, size of accounts),” the spokesperson said.
“We’re also going to broaden our distribution reach within the US wholesale channel where we currently have a smaller subset of distribution partners.
“And finally, we’re going to evaluate global footprint expansion opportunities for Chaucer.”
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